Will Fox, IndyCar find 'rapid growth' it sought after Indy 500? Detroit Grand Prix was a start

Indianapolis Star

2 days ago

It's an age-old, annual trend a couple days after the race immediately following the Indianapolis 500: Why did IndyCar lose 80% of its audience from a week ago?
And this year, for better or worse, was no different — although if you want to be specific, this year's post-500 audience drop-off was the worst the race has seen since at least 2016, if you're looking at Indy 500s with a race the next Sunday on the calendar that ran on network TV with no weather or scheduling alternations. Sunday's Detroit Grand Prix won by Andretti Global's Kyle Kirkwood averaged an audience of 1.061 million viewers, meaning the race was watched by 14.97% of the fans who tuned in for Alex Palou's Indy 500 victory the week prior.
Those other figures dating back to 2016 look like this:
2023
Indy 500: 4.716 million (on NBC)
Detroit Grand Prix: 1.047 million (on NBC)
Percentage of audience retained: 22.2%
2019
Indy 500: 5.435 million (on NBC)
Detroit Grand Prix Race 2: 1.091 million (on NBC)
Percentage of audience retained: 20.07%
2018
Indy 500: 4.910 million (on ABC)
Detroit Grand Prix Race 2: 951,000 (on ABC)
Percentage of audience retained: 19.37%
2017
Indy 500: 5.457 million (on ABC)
Detroit Grand Prix Race 2: 918,000 (on ABC)
Percentage of audience retained: 16.82%
2016
Indy 500: 6.010 million (on ABC)
Detroit Grand Prix Race 2: 1.397 million (on ABC)
Percentage of audience retained: 23.24%
In other words, as frustrating as it may be, a highly watched 500 like this year's (7.087 million) isn't going to guarantee an outlier of a next race audience. For millions upon millions of people, the Indy 500 will forever be on their radar the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, and the next time they'll think of IndyCar enough to channel surf for a race will be 365 days later.
Now, does that mean Fox shouldn't have been hitting people over the head with reminders that the Detroit Grand Prix was the following Sunday, same channel and same time? No. In my opinion, that's a missed opportunity for sure, when you know you have the attention of so many casual race fans who at that moment either have no idea when you race next or don't care enough to look into it, but that's a conversation for another column entirely.
What's clear is that the seven-day audience falloff is nothing new, and unless there's a notable move in future years to push tune-in to the next race (I watched this year's 500 back and do not remember a single mention of Detroit), then there's no reason to think it will change. It doesn't mean that topping the 7 million mark for this year's 500 for the first time since 2008 isn't a major accomplishment, because it is — an achievement borne out of more than six months of intentional, varied promotion from Fox and a product of the network pulling out all the stops.
But at the moment, IndyCar's in need of a meaningful uptick in fans who care about it more than one day a year. That 500 audience bump will no doubt help teams ask for more sponsorship dollars for Indy 500-only deals moving forward, but it's not a data figure that should be seen as an indication of where the size of the sport's active fan base is the other 364 days. And that's a number that will ultimately shape the sport's future.
The Detroit Grand Prix TV audience shouldn't be overlooked, because it's the type of figure (i.e. seven figures) IndyCar and Fox need to see a lot more of over the next three months to make Year 1 of this deal a true success.
PR reps and executives from both sides will tout the year-over-year audience boost from 2024 as proof of a monumental win already. Seven races in, the average audience size for IndyCar races this year (2.173 million) is up 31% on last year's mark with NBC (1.662 million) — a percentage boost that's only going to continue to rise. At this point a year ago, two of the seven races had aired on cable.
In total, seven of the 17 races on the 2024 calendar were scheduled for streaming-only or cable, versus zero this year with Fox. An overall average audience boost was already baked into IndyCar's deal with its newest broadcast partner. Ultimately, that means this year will be a win achieved at the negotiating table and one stemming from the sport's pure increased exposure. That simple fact, along with all practice and qualifying sessions airing on cable instead of streaming-only means that without a doubt, this sport will be seen by more eyeballs than any season in recent memory.
That means more value for teams to sell, and ultimately more revenue coming in the door, but it's not a fact indicative of a sport whose discernable fanbase has grown according to the TV numbers (more on that in a minute).
Sunday's audience size (again, 1.061 million) would fall into the middle or the upper half of recent IndyCar seasons on NBC, in terms of those years' network race metrics. Through six non-Indy 500s, it ranks second best, and notably best since the season opener on March 2 averaged 1.42 million. Since then, only one race had even topped 715,000, and none had hit 920,000.
So in that sense, eclipsing that seven-figure glass ceiling for a race that didn't have close to the buzz or intrigue of a season opener on a new network (even though it immediately followed the 500) was a win coming out of this weekend. And if IndyCar can see more of those audience sizes that start with a 1 and hit seven figures, as the season cranks into high gear with 10 races over the next 13 weekends, this could appear in hindsight a bit of an inflection point — one that would show just how important it is to race with high frequency and avoid multiple consecutive weekends off.
Still, as we stand six non-Indy 500s into the year, Fox's all-network, non-Indy 500 audience size for the year sits at 893,500. Is it higher than NBC's last year (which included seven races)? Yes (868,571). But it lags behind the four previous seasons of NBC's non-COVID-19 year IndyCar coverage. Those seasons sat pretty level throughout the entirety of the deal, ranging from 948,429 (2021) to 967,250 (2023). It's a figure I've chosen to track for years for a couple important reasons:
In essence, I feel this number most accurately tells the story of how many people are tuning into IndyCar races in recent years when the series is available to the largest audience possible, and in that, I think you can best track your race watching (i.e. passionate dedicated fans not attending the actual race) fan base and see how it ebbs and flows.
As illustrated above, that figure stayed relatively flat during IndyCar's tenure with NBC through 2023, before falling off significantly in the sides' final year together. What Fox has done so far is already gain back a not insignificant chunk of those who for whatever reason fell off from 2023 to 2024, but it's not yet at 2019 and 2021-23 standards.
To get back to that level, the final 10 IndyCar races on Fox will need to average just over 1 million viewers — 1,011,500 to be exact — for this year's non-500 network average to match that of 2023. Think the series should aspire to more? For that figure to hit 1 million for 2025, the final 10 races would need to deliver average audience sizes of 1,063,900 — almost identical to Sunday's Detroit Grand Prix.
In short: Sunday's race audience was a step in the right direction, but it can't be IndyCar's ceiling the rest of this year, if we're expected to be able to look back at Year 1 of IndyCar with Fox and see it as anything more than a win achieved in a boardroom back in June 2024. A win here means notable evidence that Fox has, by its weekly tune-in campaigns, its placement of IndyCar drivers on its various sports and news properties and its production of entertaining race broadcasts, created new TV-watching IndyCar fans.
Fox and IndyCar executives talked of 'rapid growth' and a series set 'on another trajectory' heading in this year. In a couple months, that non-Indy 500 network audience average will tell us whether or not that goal was achieved in Year 1.